Or, welcome to my low-maintenance heck.

There's a news story going on in the Billings (Montana) Gazette today regarding a claim made by that State's governor about election tampering in the previous Senatorial elections there.

I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that this will not be covered by a single national nightly news program this evening.

Can you guess why? Answer's beyond the fold.

Gov. Schweitzer boasted in a speech in Philadelphia in July that he tampered with the 2006 U.S. Senate election in Montana to help Democrat Jon Tester win.

Bozeman Republican activist Tamara Hall found the speech on the Internet and filed a complaint accusing the governor of vote-tampering in the race in which Tester narrowly unseated Republican incumbent Conrad Burns. She submitted a citizen's complaint against the Democratic governor this week with U.S. Attorney Bill Mercer and two state officials, Attorney General Mike McGrath and Secretary of State Brad Johnson.

Hall said Schweitzer boasted in the speech that "he designed a plan to threaten poll watchers on Indian reservations, [Ed.:—Where there is pervasive electoral fraud]personally applied pressure to the elections officer in Butte/Silver Bow while votes were being tabulated and manipulated the media for purposes of diminishing a call for a recount."

A: Because he's a DEMOCRAT.

Notice how Charles S. Johnson somehow managed to forget to mention Gov. Schweitzer's party affiliation in the lede? Guess he enjoys playing Name That Party, eh?

Comments:

#1 Rebecca 11-Sep-2008

From Wikipedia:

[i]After a very close election, on November 9, incumbent Conrad Burns conceded defeat.[1] Democrat Jon Tester will represent Montana in the United States Senate from January 3, 2007 to January 3, 2013.....Due to errors with polling machines the Montana count was delayed well into Wednesday 8 November. The race was too close to call throughout the night and many pundits predicted the need for a recount.[/i]

This is a fairly big deal. The temptation to sweep this under the rug - [i]What's past is past, make Schweitzer pay a fine and apologize, etc...[/i] - will be made far more difficult by the realistic concern that the tampering managed to reverse the results. If I had been a Burns voter, I'd be getting buckets of hot tar and a rail.

#2 Skul 11-Sep-2008

Oh Noes!!1! Can't be. Only evil Republicans do that!!1!

/sarc off

#3 forest 12-Sep-2008

Why does Philadelphia seem to get mentioned in every story about Democrat/ACORN voter fraud? This one is about Montana, and Philly still sneaks in there.